Chapter Seventeen: The Phantom Account

National Security Bureau, Medical Division, High-Security Ward.

Lin Feng had been here, forced to “rest,” for three days now.

He felt as if he was about to grow moss.

The nurses were gentle and beautiful, but what he missed most was the ergonomic chair in his studio that could swallow him whole, and his supercomputer capable of connecting to the universe.

He was just about to start calculating the prime numbers in the patterns on the ceiling when the door to his room opened.

Xiao Ran entered, dressed in casual clothes, carrying what appeared to be an ordinary fruit basket.

“What’s this? Come to check if I’m dead yet?” Lin Feng said weakly.

“Your life still belongs to me,” Xiao Ran replied, setting the basket on the table. From it, she retrieved… an apple.

She handed the apple to Lin Feng.

He took it, puzzled. It felt wrong. Too light.

He squeezed it, and the surface of the apple split open.

Inside, it was hollow. Hidden within was a military-grade encrypted USB drive, smaller than a fingernail.

“The Butcher talked,” Xiao Ran said crisply. “Zurich, United Credit Bank. This is the access key he provided. But our people tried every conventional login method and failed. That account is like a ghost—it doesn’t exist in the bank’s public system.”

“Conventional methods?” Lin Feng chuckled, a spark of vitality flickering in those tired eyes. “When dealing with someone like Anderson, your ‘conventional’ is like lighting a candle in a latrine—looking for crap.”

“I need you to go in,” Xiao Ran ignored the crude metaphor, her gaze heavy. “Find the payment made to the mercenaries, then follow the money to uncover Anderson’s true source of funds.”

“Nice job,” Lin Feng weighed the “apple” in his hand, a familiar, confident smirk tugging at his lips. “But the equipment here… is absolute garbage.”

“Follow me.” Xiao Ran didn’t say more, simply turned and left.

…

Lin Feng hadn’t expected Xiao Ran to bring him back to the one place he’d sworn never to set foot in again—the Command Center of the “Shadow Bureau.”

But this time, he wasn’t greeted by suspicious, guarded eyes.

Every agent, upon seeing him, instinctively straightened up, their gazes filled with complex emotions—respect, curiosity, and even… a trace of awe.

“Your ‘kennel’ is waiting for you,” Xiao Ran said coolly.

Lin Feng walked to his familiar corner and found everything exactly as he’d left it, even his unfinished take-out box sitting untouched.

He understood—this was Xiao Ran’s way of showing her recognition.

“Alright then.” He shrugged, sinking back into his beloved chair, feeling as though his soul had finally found rest.

“But to get in there,” he said, connecting the micro USB to his system, “I’ll need a new set of ‘diving gear.’”

From his toolkit, he produced a pair of cyberpunk-styled neural-sensing VR goggles.

“What are you planning?” Xiao Ran frowned.

“Going fishing,” Lin Feng replied, donning the glasses and leaning back, his voice growing distant and ethereal.

“For a great white shark hidden in the deepest server oceans of every bank in the world.”

“Your fishing rods are too short—they can only reach the shallows.”

“I’ll need to use my… ‘quantum rod.’”

The instant Lin Feng put on the glasses and entered work mode, the command center’s main screen shifted—the dull code interface vanished.

In its place unfolded a breathtaking, awe-inspiring “data universe” that drew gasps from everyone present.

[Data Visualization Interface—Activated]

This was an endless virtual space, woven from countless glowing lines and nodes.

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On the screen, enormous “galaxies” formed from clusters of light points rotated slowly. Each “galaxy” represented the financial server clusters of a nation.

Between these galaxies, countless smaller “planets” glimmered in different hues, each following its own orbit. These were the offshore company accounts registered in havens like the Cayman Islands or the Virgin Islands.

Funds moved like phantom ships between these “planets,” leaping instantly through invisible “wormholes”—encrypted channels.

Most spectacular were the multicolored beams, streaking through the data cosmos like meteor showers.

“That’s… cryptocurrency trading,” Old K murmured, his voice trembling at the grandeur. “Bitcoin, Ethereum, Monero… God, every second, billions of dollars are being laundered clean through this.”

This was Anderson’s underground financial kingdom.

An invisible empire.

At this moment, Lin Feng was the captain of a lone “starship.”

He piloted his golden cursor-shaped “tracing probe,” entering the 128-digit key provided by the Butcher.

Buzz—

The entire “data universe” seemed to open a dedicated route for him.

His probe accelerated, shooting through galaxies, finally docking at the edge of the immense “Swiss United Credit Bank” galaxy—a nondescript, dormant “ghost account.”

“I’m in.” Lin Feng’s voice was calm.

He began to follow the money trail from this account, tracing it back.

The golden cursor embarked on a dizzying cosmic voyage.

From Switzerland, it leapt instantly to a shell company account in Panama, paused less than 0.1 seconds, then split into dozens of streams, each flowing into different cryptocurrency exchanges around the globe.

Then, these cryptocurrencies were converted into various fiat currencies and deposited into hundreds of seemingly unrelated personal accounts.

The entire process was complex, precise, and utterly without pattern.

Any ordinary financial regulatory system would be powerless against such a global money-laundering web.

But Lin Feng was not ordinary.

His mind was a supercomputer born for this chase. He could always find that single, gravitationally true trajectory amid the apparent chaos of data.

Time ticked by.

One hour…

Two hours…

Everyone in the command center was transfixed, breathless, by the near-miraculous pursuit unfolding on the screen.

At last, after tens of thousands of jumps and disguises, the scattered streams began to reconverge.

They pointed to a single destination.

“We’ve almost got it!” Old K shouted excitedly.

The golden cursor, as if sensing victory, accelerated toward the final convergence point—a “black hole account” glowing dark red, hidden deep within the “Orion Capital” server galaxy.

But just as Lin Feng’s “tracing probe” was about to touch the “black hole account,” a sudden change erupted.

The “black hole account” awoke like a deep-sea leviathan, opening its eyes.

A vast net of intricate, red-warning-sigiled mathematical models sprang out, ensnaring Lin Feng’s golden cursor.

“Damn! It’s a trap!” For the first time, Lin Feng’s voice carried a hint of gravity.

The net, a monstrous beast, began ravenously devouring his probe, trying to trace his real-world location through it.

“Boss! It’s the ‘Prometheus’ V3.0 defense system!” His AI assistant, “Mouse,” sounded a true alarm for the first time. “Anderson’s elite financial security team is in play! Their processing power is three times ours! We’re being traced!”

Every heart in the command center leapt to their throats.

Yet after the initial shock, a feverish, almost bloodthirsty excitement appeared on Lin Feng’s face.

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He looked at the algorithmic deep-sea monster on the screen and laughed coldly.

“Prometheus? The Titan who stole fire for mankind?”

Slowly, he raised his hands—pale from exhaustion—and placed his fingers on the keyboard once more.

“Perfect.”

“My codename is ‘Zhurong.’”

“The god who tames all who dare defy.”

…

A silent war erupted in the depths of the data sea.

Lin Feng’s fingers moved so fast they became a blur.

But the opponent’s algorithmic beast was too powerful. The net kept tightening, and Lin Feng’s golden cursor was being devoured piece by piece.

“Boss! The first firewall layer is breached!”

“Second layer breached!”

“We can only hold for… ten more seconds!”

At this critical moment, Lin Feng made an unexpected choice.

He stopped resisting.

Instead, he voluntarily detonated his “tracing probe.”

Boom—

A silent explosion resounded through the data universe.

The golden cursor disintegrated instantly into billions of fragments, annihilating the red net along with it.

A warrior’s sacrifice.

Lin Feng, at the cost of one probe, managed to completely sever all connections a split second before the enemy could complete their trace.

He removed his VR goggles, his face even more ashen from the mental strain.

He slumped back, gasping for breath.

“Did we fail…” someone in the command center asked dejectedly.

“No.”

Lin Feng gazed at the data universe on the screen, now serene once more, and slowly revealed a victor’s smile.

He enlarged a window.

Inside was a tiny “data shard,” ripped from the algorithmic beast in the instant before his probe self-destructed.

The shard had a structure as complex and stable as a chemical molecule.

“I lost the first round,” Lin Feng murmured to Xiao Ran, who had been silent with tension on the other end of the communicator.

“But…”

“…I’ve got one of their ‘teeth.’”

“Give me some time, and I’ll figure out exactly what this shark…”

“…has been feeding on.”